On the Utility and Use of Marines

[Panag]

hi ,

, thanks Jaybe

man this is cool

have a nice day

[Mad Bomber]

jay:

I see; this region is only a mid priority and your resources are tied up, but you do recognize that you need more carriers. Is this theatre a necessary one? Perhaps a tactical retreat would be in order to preserve your strength until more resources are available to the area.

Interesting mod.... I have done similar mods to the air war

MY goals for these mods are:

1. Make fighters able to conduct "fighter sweeps"
2. Still have the defender of the airspace have a small advantage
3. simulate the change from the pure bomber to the fighter-bomber with the jet age.
4. Increase the lethality and effectiveness of bombardments
5. Have the US have an advantage in air warfare.
6. Increase flexiblility by allowing aircraft to rebase and attack in same turn.


Attack/Defense/Range/ Bombardment/Moves

Fighter 5/4/4/12/2
Jet fighter 10/8/6/16/2 (+2 HP)
Bomber 0/2/12/16/2
F-15 12/10/8/20/2 (+2 HP)
Stealth Fighter 0/4/12/20/2
Stealth Bomber 0/2/35/24/2

interception rates remain as default. All aircraft have lethal bombardment.

[Jaybe]

... All aircraft have lethal bombardment.

We are ALL wierd in our own ways, especially when we are playing single-player!

[Solomwi]

In the spirit of a picture being worth a thousand words, I thought this illustrated a beautiful use for Marines.

The situation is that the Arabs are pretty weak (yet insist on starting a war with me), but slogging up to Mecca (their only city worth taking) with Tanks was still going to take WAY too long (7 turns in a best case scenario) and take a lot of resources. As you can see, Bakr does have Infantry, but he isn't fully upgraded (is the AI ever?). His Infantry units are pretty much all en route to the front line, or fortified in the border cities, meaning an armored push would encounter most, if not all, of them. This in turn most likely means heavy casualties and a whole lot of tanks committed to the advance.

With Marines, though, I was able to sail north for two turns, take Yamama on that second turn, which was considered pretty secure due to location by the AI and only defended by a single Pikeman, and land a Transport full of Tanks behind them. That same turn, the armored division took Mecca that same turn (defense: 1 Inf, 2 Guerilla, 1 Rifle and 1 Pike). So I achieved the same objective in at least five fewer turns, with fewer units and casualties and without having to take on 3-4 more large, unproductive cities and try to keep them from flipping, soaking up even more resources (even if I just sit a couple of units outside each one to retake it in case it does flip). Btw, once I saw the Pikeman in Yamama, I didn't even bother bombarding, and thus was able to take it with Harbor and Marketplace intact, which was crucial to keeping the two cities out of disorder. Bypass the bulk of the enemy's defenses and sieze his capital in one fell swoop... it was sweet.

I have to admit I felt like MacArthur at Inchon .

[Theseus]

Another picture worth a thousand words (and holy sh*t, Solomonwi, the pic in the previous post still overwhelms me!):

We don;t really have such a good Berserk thread ( /me gets thinking...), so I thought I'd post this here.

This is from MZOBC4 (Master Zen Online Boot Camp 4), which I had been playing in the lull before AUSG101.

(And not providing proper DARs for, sorry to all)

This happened to be my third game in a row with Berserks... I really should write up a thread on them, as they are 1) awesome, and 2) a little tricky to use well, in fact.

My big learning has been that they are for RAZING!!

They are not best as the point team in an IC, although that's fine too... if you look at the minimap below, I used them to take down a very defendable peninsula from the Japanese.

But for the most part, keep'em at sea, and open a can'o whupass on everyone while that 6a advantage is going.

Here's the best part: See the redlined Berserk? Look closely to his left as he razes the city!!

[Solomwi]

Excellent, Theseus! I do believe I see a Leader about to die . Man, you don't know how fortuitous it is that you pulled this up when you did. I've been trying to get games going with China, Greece and Rome, and have been getting absolutely disgusted and frustrated with all three (mainly due to having Exp and Sci neighbors). It was good to see one of my most glorious moments again . I'm not sure if the rubble to the north was autorazed or not, but that would have been a wonderful insertion point for some Knights/Cav's to snag Nora and the Ivory that same turn. Of course, if you've got Cavs under those Muskets, you're covered.

I've got to go back and play the Vikings again for those bad boys. It looks like you're using my second favorite amphibious tactic, too (sail along pruning every coastal city the enemy has and let the more conventional forces clean up inside).

Beautiful shot! Amphibious assault may be the most under-rated characteristic of the game.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Solomwi
Excellent, Theseus! I do believe I see a Leader about to die . Man, you don't know how fortuitous it is that you pulled this up when you did. I've been trying to get games going with China, Greece and Rome, and have been getting absolutely disgusted and frustrated with all three (mainly due to having Exp and Sci neighbors). It was good to see one of my most glorious moments again . I'm not sure if the rubble to the north was autorazed or not, but that would have been a wonderful insertion point for some Knights/Cav's to snag Nora and the Ivory that same turn. Of course, if you've got Cavs under those Muskets, you're covered.

I've got to go back and play the Vikings again for those bad boys. It looks like you're using my second favorite amphibious tactic, too (sail along pruning every coastal city the enemy has and let the more conventional forces clean up inside).

Beautiful shot! Amphibious assault may be the most under-rated characteristic of the game.

hi ,

be carefull with that kind of stuff , a while back a guy lost a king unit to a berserker with two HP's ( okay this is a GL , but still )

GL's should be captured and held , in return the civ of the GL should loose culture points or so , .....

anyway , we should at least be able to capture the unit and use it for ourselves , ......

have a nice day

[Solomwi]

GL's should be captured and held , in return the civ of the GL should loose culture points or so , .....

At the most, the capturing civ should be able to decide whether to kill the GL (rep hit, of course) or ransom him back to his native civ. Naturally, though, most of us would hold off such a decision if possible, and keep him captive deep in our own territory, so the ransom would have to be pretty stout.

[Twelvebottoms]

I've used marines for amphibious assault (against England), and why not? It's fun to attack straight off the transport into a city, and hear the mechanical hammering of the M60s. Although in my (newbie) experience a full transport can just barely take a coastal city defended by infantry. Anyway, if it's fun, do it. Even if your marines get cut to ribbons while wading from the transport to the beach.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Re: City Defense Bonuses Apply

Wow - thanks for the bump. Had never read this before and it was awesome.

I would be interested to hear what the changed uses of Marines are now with C3C, if any. There have been dramatic changes with far-reaching implications for many other units, and I just wanted to know if anyone has got this far and found any for Marines.

Originally posted by Catt


Okay -- I managed to set up and run a test to determine whether defenders lose their city defense bonuses when facing amphibious assaults. And now, seriously:

In the editor, I configured the human player to start with about 15 settlers, several workers, a pair of explorers, 3 or 4 infantry, 8 marines, 100,000 gold, all technologies discovered, and in a Democracy. Each of the AI civs were given all techs through replaceable parts, a settler, a worker, and an infantry. Infantry was modified so that rubber was not a required resource; transport modified so oil was not a required resource. All combat experience (conscript, regular, veteran and elite) given 10 hit points. Difficulty was set at Regent.

Started game. Selected tiny map, archipelago max water, warm, wet, 5 billion.

Now I just wanted to ask a question here Catt - if you can remember back to this test! Why did you bother actually playing the game for a while like this? In recent tests of mine investigating why Palaces and FPs could get bombarded away, I just added the civ to attack with improvements where I wanted them and population to suit, added military untis for another civ next to the cities, gave this new civ 1000 gold starting treasury and one city in a far-off place. Then I played to test what the Arty would take down in those Great Walled cities.

Is it just that some of those options I (ab)used were not in the editor at the time, or was there some deeper reason for actually setting up your testing situation in-game rather than purely with the ed?

[Catt]

Re: Re: City Defense Bonuses Apply

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
Now I just wanted to ask a question here Catt - if you can remember back to this test! Why did you bother actually playing the game for a while like this?
[. . .]
Is it just that some of those options I (ab)used were not in the editor at the time, [. . .]?

Bingo! The editor of the time didn't allow for placing units, cities, improvements, etc. (though you could modify starting units) so I had to engineer a way to get an AI coastal metropolis, defended by an infantry, without walls, coastal fortress, etc., and all within range of my marines and a transport built from scratch for the test.

I've found it much easier to test most gameplay questions with the current editor .

Catt

[realpolitic]

Fascinating....

I've not used the Marines yet, because of the use of 4 turns. I turn the diplo victory condition off, but Computers are a higher priority. After reading this, I'm going to mod the tech tree so I'll try it. If I like them enough maybe I'll go with the original tree.

[dexters]

Nice to see Catt's classic thread back in action.

Marines are definately much more useful with C3C. Watch out for those AI amphib landings too.

[KenderBane]

There has been only one situation where I have found Marines to be absolutely needed.

When the opponent builds a city on a one or two-space island and there is no other room to land units. I hav seen the AI build cities on a two space island and place a defensive unit on the other space, just to deny an easy landing to an amphibious force.

Other than that kind of situation, I can usually find an undefended beachhead for my tanks and cavalry to land on. So the 'need' for Marines in my games is very small.
(and as a consequence, the utility of them also very small).

[Theseus]

You are missing out on a lotta fun then. Try Berserks to get a taste for the benefits of amphib attacks.

(just don't try to put Marines in a Berserk Army)